Clive Goddard

It’s not a bad job I’ve got, I must say. Some days I find myself drawing cartoons for grown-ups: satirical strips about the weirdness of modern culture for Private Eye or absurd, slightly smutty things for Paperlink cards. It might be an advert for a business or an image for a campaign or something which is used to explain a difficult concept. All sorts of diverse stuff. On other days, however, I enter an entirely different world and spend my time writing and illustrating for children. Sometimes this can feel like a major adjustment. The nine year old’s world is a far less cynical one and a far more pleasant one to disappear into. A world where no one talks about Brexit or international terrorism or Kim Kardashian. It’s a wonderful place where puns and bodily functions are not just an accepted form of humour but are considered high art. It’s a world of Roman soldiers being chased by blue-painted ancient Britons, scientists making disgusting smells and black-bearded pirates hacking lumps off each other. It’s brilliant. Over the years I’ve illustrated around 30 books for Scholastic including the Horribly Famous series chronicling the life and times of Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Queen Victoria and numerous other famous, dead people. I’ve drawn massive ancient battles with armoured elephants, burning siege towers and swarms of spear-wielding warriors wearing sandals (that’s a lot of toes by the way). In these books I’ve always tried get the details right, or in the absence of reliable source material, as right as possible. The prospect of being confronted by a terrifyingly clever Year 4 child who tells me I’ve drawn a fifteenth century pope’s hat the wrong shape is a very real fear. There are plenty of portraits of kings and queens to refer to but no one is entirely sure what Boudicca or Spartacus actually looked like so, once committed to print, my version runs the risk of being considered definitive. More than once I have searched Google images for a picture reference and been presented with one of my own pieces of guesswork. I suppose this is how ‘facts’ happen. As well as illustrating I have also written three children’s comedy novels centred around hopeless boy explorer ‘Fintan Fedora’. These are, I freely admit, based on my own disastrous travel experiences.I often visit primary schools to promote my books and hold creative writing and cartooning workshops for Key Stages 2 and 3, drawing everything from simple facial expressions to caricatures of famous faces. Like I said, it’s not a bad job. Text ©Clive Goddard - Oxford Mail